Yeah I played a little of Icewind, but I was referring to Baldur's gate 2. If you like icewind you'll love BG, ill buy the first one so you can play that first if you want. It gives you the option to keep your character from the first all the way through the expansion. As far as going after special items, just collect em on your way :P And since I was doing my play through to try and collect all the special items, I stored all of them inside the actual store! I was so surprised the store keep didn't mind me moving all his crap out of a container and letting me put mine in there. But I would only go to him to buy and sell whatever my party needed, and he offered me to see his "special wares".... for a fee
learn something new each time around. It is very complex in comparison to the PS2 version, I was such a huge fan of the PS2, but when I found it for the computer I was mind blown. It took me a long while to not get the crap kicked out of me too though, definitely gotta get used to the rules and all that.
Also, does the game crash or your computer? Every now and again BG2 shuts down on me, says it stopped working. But it was very infrequent so I wasn't too concerned.